Priest Heals and Down Ranking in Wrath of the Lich King
I labeled this post as a priest topic because the blizzard response just happened to be in the priest forums. Right now priests are pretty hard pressed (too many P’s) for any real jaw dropping changes like the other classes are getting.
With that said, the issues of downranking spells for all healer classes has been somewhat rocky. This happens whenever there’s a big shift in the playstyle and game mechanics we are all comfortable with. The same happened when Burning Crusade came out and everybody suddenly got 6-8k health and if you had resilience than massive crit classes like warriors and mages couldn’t take you down in one hit anymore. Let’s just see how it plays out, at least Blizzard knows we are concerned.
If we find that any of the healers is now missing a critical tool from their toolbox (specifically an efficient heal that is good for e.g. topping of a rogue), then that is something we will definitely consider. (src)
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Aug 15th, 2008 at 2:17 pm
I can understand the desire for downranked heals, and perhaps they’ll make an exception. The abuses of downrankes spells has typically been in pvp anyway. However, topping someone off with a DR spell usually means it’s not really necessary anyway in most cases. Occasionally, it’s needed to ensure that all members are topped off before a raid-wide damage takes place, but I suspect that groups could handle that without too much difficulty. I used to us a DR spell on my shammy to get the Healing Way buff up on the tank, but it’s not really necessary.
Sep 11th, 2008 at 3:06 pm
Actually, downranking heals is more than just that, especially to priests. You see as it is now in TBC, when you have a certain amount of bonus healing, lower ranks of a heal do automatically become more efficient than higher ranks, simply because the lower ranks also gain the bonus healing effects (even if they gain a lesser percent of them).
If your heals are expensive when it comes to mana, downranking is even more important: Holy priests to frequently swap in Greater Heal(Rank 1) as even their very most common spell used, simply because the cost of using it is bearable. The changed done to the manacost of all spells, so that they cost a percent of one’s mana, will affect holy priests in particular, but it will also be a major slap in the face to any healers who are used to depend on bonus healing/spellpower only.
My comments
Sep 12th, 2008 at 12:20 pm
I play a holy priest, I have never downranked, well I shouldn’t say never, I think I still have like GH 4 on my toolbar, but I typically just toss out the big one.
I am a DS holy priest though, so that might make some difference in the mana regen, but I’ve never had a problem with mana regen, especially since the change in spirit. To me downranking seemed critical for those who had trouble managing mana and stacked bonus healing only.
It’s easy to fall into the bonus healing stacking trap because so many people who don’t play healers want people with big bonus heal as they think it’s the most important stat. When people ask me about my bonus heal, I tell them my bonus heal and my mana regen rates, because I feel that number is equally as important.
Sep 29th, 2008 at 5:25 pm
You are right, i dont like too when others asking only healup, mana regen is important too. BUT kill downranking is the worst blizzard idea ever.